Wireless terminals in a wireless communications system supporting uplink traffic, e.g., uplink user data, from the wireless terminals to the base stations need to use uplink air link resources to both communicate control information and user data. In multiple access wireless communications systems, typically, multiple wireless terminals using a base station attachment point are competing for valuable uplink air link resources, e.g., uplink traffic channel air link resources. One approach to partitioning uplink traffic channel resources is for the wireless terminals to send resource requests to their current base station attachment point, and for the base station to consider the competing requests and allocate the resources, e.g., uplink traffic channel segments, in accordance with its scheduling rules.
In one approach of request reporting, a wireless terminal reports its absolute backlog during each subsequent request reporting opportunity. This approach although simple to implement is not highly efficient. A wireless terminal, from one request opportunity to another, may not have significantly changed with respect to the amount of uplink traffic backlog that it has queued waiting to be transmitted. For example, the base station may have decided not to allocate the wireless terminal any uplink resources for traffic between the requests due to other wireless terminals needs having higher priority. As another example, the base station may have allocated the wireless only a small fraction of the total amount of resources required to empty its transmission queue backlog.
It should be appreciated that an efficient request reporting implementation reduces the overhead signaling thus leaving move air link resources available for uplink traffic. Based on the above discussion, it should be appreciated that there is a need for methods and apparatus for reporting control information in an efficient manner. It would be desirable if at least some efficient reporting methods could be devised which utilize previously communicated backlog information in at least some reports.